Wayne Borean’s Techdirt Comments

Timing

Could also be a timing issue. Possibly Senator Wyden is waiting for someone to commit themselves to something spectacularly stupid, and then he's going to release it. Politics is after all, the roughest of all the Blood Sports.

Canada

That's why I've been recommending

That no site should be hosted in the U.S., or use a U.S. Top Level Domain. It's just too dangerous, until the case law is settled, because you never know when someone might take offense at what you are doing.

That's why my sites are hosted in Canada, and use the .CA TLD, so that if anyone wants to take offense with me, they have to do it on my home ground.

SAAB

Oh, come on folks, the answer is so damned simple you should all hang you heads in shame.

SAAB

Not the automobile company, the military aircraft manufacturer. SAAB is one of Sweden's major exports, in addition to supplying nearly all Swedish military aircraft. To function SAAB has to have access to American technology, like radars, computers, missiles...

So when the Americans threaten to cut the Swedes off, the Swedes pay attention.

That's what I suspect happened. We'll have to see if any cables cover the issue.

The USPTO is incompetent

I've said this many times. After reading many insane patents that have been granted, that is the conclusion that I've reached.

I know a lot of people who work for the Patent Office are offended by my opinion. That's their problem. If they persist in allowing stupid patents to be issued (like the infamous Dean Drive), they have no right to expect my opinion to change.

Mike, I took a good look at the numbers, and did some research. While what they reported is probably accurate based on the numbers they have, those numbers aren't complete.

I checked their database against some artists, and the database is missing a lot of information. A couple of the artists weren't big (which is why I picked them), so the database doesn't include smaller acts - and the acts that I picked are ones that are working music full time.

This got me wondering. It appeared that the database was biased towards Rock and Roll, so I checked their listing for Stompin' Tom Conners, and it claimed that he hadn't performed a concert since 2004, though his website claims he was busy nearly every weekend this summer.

Translation Issues

Heh. The problem is that most people don't translate what the politicians and/or police are actually saying. Take Conor Lenihan, an Irish Politician, who has admitted that he is bought and paid for. He didn't say this directly, but when you parse what he did say, that is what he meant.

How do you streamline a musician's car? Remove the Pizza delivery sign from the roof.

What do you call a musician who's been dumped by his girlfriend? Homeless.

*****

You'll hear those jokes wherever you meet musicians. Another thing that you'll hear is that 'Real Musicians have day jobs', must musicians don't regard people like David Bowie or Billy Joel as real musicians. They are the 'outliers' as Mike said, the odd balls.

Encrytpion

Unless the judge defined what he meant by encryption carefully, this poor guy wouldn't be allowed to own any modern computer, and quite a few antiques. According to memory Encryption is built into every Microsoft OS from Windows 95 on (it may be in the older ones too, but I don't remember), all of Mac OS X, all of Linux, all of BSD, all of Solaris, all of Aix (and every other proprietary Unix).

The Daily Gruaniad

For those who aren't English, the Guardian, a northern paper was famous for spelling errors, due to the need to publish really early so it could be on the streets of London at the same time as the London papers.

Now to the point - Mike, did you know that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has literally bought coverage at the Guardian? Seriously. I don't know all of the details, but a grant was given for the Guardian to cover certain issues.

The problem with this being, that now that the Guardian has been given this grant, is it likely to treat the Foundation, and Microsoft, the company behind the Foundation differently?